U.S. College Students With Autism Two-To-Four Times Higher Than Research Cited More Than 18,000 Times Since 2016

The number of college students with autism is two to four times higher than previously estimated. From 0.3% to 4.7% of all undergraduate students have been diagnosed with autism, representing a range of 135,400 to 286,254 students. Previous estimates suggested that the number of college students with autism could be 60,000.

The researchers conducted a literature survey that identified 14 publications and three statistical summaries drawn from a total of 13 distinct sources of underlying data. The goal was to estimate the number of individuals with autism enrolled in post-secondary education. Only 62.7 . . .